I heard an interesting tale that perhaps someone could confirm. Supposedly the Marine Corps no longer requires safety vests for motorcycles because they don't assist at all. In fact they actually attract drivers!

Sir, this is actually true for the Army as well. The last revision of 385-10 did away with the requirement to wear reflective vests or belts on motorcycles. I heard directly from the CG of the CRC that this was the same case, the CRC did a multi-year study and concluded that there was no statistical evidence to suggest that wearing reflective material decreased the rate or severeness of accidents. The Army also issued an ALARACT message to that end saying that commanders should not add to any riding gear requirements. I believe the goal behind this is to standardize the PPE requirements across the DoD because there have been issues where a SM would leave one service's installation in compliance with PPE requirements and ride to a nearby or adjacent installation of another service and not be allowed on base because they didn't meet that installation's PPE requirements.

ON the attracting subject, there are a lot of vehicles on the side of the road that get hit because of this phenomenon. The common reason why people on bikes, (motorized or not), hit obstacles is because they look at them. I still wear a vest because I split lanes (which is legal in California). I have seen people look RIGHT at me but still pull out on me on side roads. That's another issue though.